Trivia for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was the third highest-grossing film of the year. The screenplay was 1000 pages long. The film received controversy because of its extreme profanity against Haitian-Americans or Haitians. Rockstar Games originally thought of toning the profanity against those people down, but later decided to only edit the discrimination scenes in the country were those people come from. The movie was released unedited in the rest of the world. Rockstar Games has a brief cameo appearance in this film: he is one of the three businessmen who is shown arguing with the others next to the huge telemarking company. There are numerous references to the 80s television series Miami Vice, including the casting of Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance. The box office earnings of Grand Theft Auto III (2001) were exceeded in two weeks by this film. Since this film emulates the movie Scarface (1983) and contains references to the 80s crime television series Miami Vice, it however ironically does not contain the disco music on the background from Scarface (1983), although the film Grand Theft Auto III (2001) does. Rockstar Games said he still regrets that he didn't use that film's soundtrack. The film emulates the movie Scarface (1983): a low life thug leaves a place he doesn't want to be (Prison/Cuba) and moves to Miami (or in VC's case, Vice City), gets caught up in a riot, wears flowery shirts, and begins to take over the city, with a chaotic ending battle. The apartment where Tony's friend was killed is featured, along with the area known as Little Havana that was featured at the beginning of the film, and two nightclubs (The Malibu, Pole Position Club) are clones of two nightclubs in the film (The Babylon, and the Little Havana Club). Rockstar Games, director of this film, is known to be a huge fan of that film. Because of this, some people actually believe that Scarface (1983) is canon with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Between wraps of filming, Rockstar Games would often take the cast and crew to the hot spots of Miami, Florida since they were shooting on location. The scene at the Shooting Sports which contains a prolonged amount of dialog between Tommy Vercetti and Phil Cassidy, the entire conversation was improvised. William Fichtner was the original choice for the character Ken Rosenberg, but he had to decline due to scheduling conflicts. Rockstar Games later decided to offer Sean Penn the role, which he accepted. In the editing room, the film's colors were toned up in order to get an extreme colorful view of Vice City. This technique was later re-used during the making of the film Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006), which is a prequel to this film and takes place on the same location. This is the first Grand Theft Auto-film to have the official poster containing the iconic small squares which shows the characters of the film or certain verhicles/helicopters or shots of the city. However, it is not the first time that it has been used since Grand Theft Auto III (2001) also had a similar poster but then in red. However, that was not the film's official poster.